Russia plans to spend $240 billion in seven years to fight crime, ensure public safety

Jan 13, 2014

RBTH

Interfax

The Russian Interior Ministry plans to spend almost eight trillion rubles ($240 billion) in the next seven years to fight crime and ensure public safety.

The Russian Interior Ministry plans to spend almost eight trillion rubles ($240 billion) in the next seven years to fight crime and ensure public safety.

The relevant sum is stipulated in the Russian government draft resolution on approving the Russian state program on ensuring public order and fighting crime for 2014-2020.

The document drafted by the Interior Ministry has been posted on a single portal of legal acts and results of their public discussions.

The budget allocations for the program in 2013-2020 will amount to 7.979 trillion rubles ($240 billion) and the sum of annual financing will be between 0.9 ($27.1 billion) and 1.1 trillion rubles ($33.1 billion), the draft resolution said.

According to the draft resolution, the purpose of the state program is increasing the quality and efficiency of fighting crime, guarding public order and property, ensuring public and traffic safety and raising people's trust in law enforcement agencies.

Related:

It is proposed to consider for comparison figures of police work for a certain period and the year 2011 as target indicators of the state program. The indicators include the number of criminals not found, the number of serious and especially serious offences committed on the streets, citizen's certainty in the protection of their personal and property interests (the share of positive assessments among respondents); social risk (the number of individuals, who died in traffic accidents per 100,000 people).

The document also comprises subprograms on various directions of law enforcement authorities' work. In particular, it is planned to spend over 4 trillion rubles ($120.5 billion) on the police subprogram.

According to the documents in the subprogram, it stipulates a range of measures, which should increase the efficiency of solving certain types of crimes manifested in the decrease of unsolved murders, intentional infliction of serious bodily harm and robberies.

Special attention will be paid to the safety of judges, prosecutors, investigators, law enforcement agents and supervising agencies' employees, who are under protection.

The authors of the document plan to increase the quality and legality of work of interior agencies' interrogating officers "by cutting instances of being groundlessly held criminally liable."

Other priorities of the subprogram include decreasing crime among minors, serious and especially serious crimes on the street and on public transport, cutting the number of offences committed by police and lowering the death toll on roads.

Another subprogram stipulates allocation of over 2.8 trillion rubles ($84.3 billion) "to create a system of constructive cooperation with mass media outlets and partnership relations with the civil society ensuring the necessary conditions for forming positive image of the Russian interior ministry's employee and increasing trust of citizens towards the interior affairs agencies."

This subprogram also suggest "establishing conditions in detention facilities for suspects and defendants of the Russian interior affairs agencies meeting the Russian law, increasing the health level, working efficiency and battle readiness of the Russian Interior Ministry's manpower."

The authors of the draft forecast that the inevitability of the responsibility for actions and increasing the level of citizens' safety amid cutting the number of crimes, raising the confidence of citizens in the protection of their personal and property interests and preserving the positive dynamics of cutting the numbers of casualties in road accidents should be the expected results of the program.

The parties responsible to the implementation of the program are the Interior Ministry as well as the defense and emergency ministries, the ministry of education and sciences, the trade ministry, the Federal Security Service, the Federal Drug Control Service, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the Federal Customs Service, the Federal Labor Service Rostrud and the Federal Road Agency Rosavtodor.